


Truce

by rmc28



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen, POV Pepper Potts, beating up all the hammer security guards was very therapeutic for natasha, for really good reasons, how natasha puts up with him i do not know, pepper is so angry with tony in this film, women maybe learning to like each other, women working together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 15:14:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3451889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rmc28/pseuds/rmc28
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Pepper stopped disliking Natalie Rushman after Tony's disastrous birthday party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truce

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InitialA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InitialA/gifts).



> With grateful thanks to [redacted] and [redacted] for beta-reading.

Pepper let Happy bundle her outside, away from the destruction Tony and Rhodey were wreaking on the Malibu house. In front of a horde of witnesses of course, because Tony would never do things quietly when he could make a spectacle of himself. Oh, she was furious with him on so many levels right now.

Of course, she wasn't just angry with him; she had a whole host of people making her life infuriating, whether it was Hammer and his infantile man-crush/inferiority complex about Tony, or the unsubtle attitude to her promotion to CEO from pretty much everyone, or Natalie and her flirtatious enabling ways, or this crowd of hangers-on still watching the Tony Stark Destruction Show, while Happy hustled her away to what he considered a safe distance.

The crowd suddenly dispersed into a mass of screaming running people. Happy kept her out of their way and she took brief bitter pleasure in their scurrying away. She'd be grateful later to whatever it was that had finally scared them away. Happy was trying to get her into a car, but she refused to leave, even when something seemed to explode inside the house, shortly followed by a suit flying away. She focused on it and saw it was Rhodey's silver suit, not Tony's red-and-gold. Time to go back in and try to fix things without an audience then.

As she picked her way across broken glass and rubble towards the house, the whine of repulsors made her lift her head to see the red-and-gold suit also fly away. So much for talking to Tony. But there was still stuff to fix. And also Natalie, working her way in from a different direction - wherever she'd run to when Happy had grabbed Pepper.

"Natalie!" she called, letting her tone be a warning. To Natalie's credit, she barely paused, and they came close enough for talking a short way from the ruined living room. Natalie opened her mouth.

"Don't even think of Ms Pottsing me right now. I'm really not happy with you, Natalie," said Pepper. Natalie straightened, projecting defiance and a fair bit of anger herself.

"I have been doing my job, Ms Potts." She looked directly at Pepper. "I do anything and everything that Mr Stark requires. I think that's how you phrased the job description." 

Pepper gave a short, unwilling laugh. "Did you get that from Tony, or from Ms Everhart's interview?" 

"Both? I think Tony liked your phrasing anyway. I did read up on both of you when I was given the CEO handover paperwork to prepare." She'd softened her stance a bit now, less defiance, a little defensive. "I'm not stupid, and I am ambitious. I could tell there was going to be a vacancy with you becoming CEO, and you'd stuck it out for a long time so maybe it wasn't awful ..." Pepper's face must have shown too much of her reaction to that one because Natalie had the temerity to smile at her.

"Well OK, after I'd done my reading, I thought maybe it was the kind of awful I could do well."

Pepper stopped bothering to hide her amusement and Natalie continued.

"And it would be a huge step up from drawing up contracts in Legal. So yes, I came to that meeting trying to look as competent and attractive as possible." 

A raised eyebrow from Pepper met a small shrug from Natalie. 

"Mr Stark picks attractive people who are _also_ really good at their jobs. That's really obvious once you look. And it makes a nice change from just being picked for being decorative." A shadow crossed Natalie's expression, and Pepper winced internally in memory of all the people who'd thought she was just decorative. And all the people who thought that was the only reason she was CEO now.

"And it helped that Happy was being especially patronising and I was able to show off a bit."

"Yes," said Pepper. "You were fairly spectacular. Where did you learn to do that kind of thing?" She made sure to let a bit of admiration into her voice. Natalie's body language had relaxed down into deferential/open, and she was speaking more naturally and enthusiastically.

"Judo at school, and I got onto the college team, and then got recruited by a firm that specialised in, uh, personal security."

"Bodyguard," said Pepper, flatly.

"Yes," said Natalie, her wary look back up a notch in response to Pepper's tone. 

"People don't look at someone like me and think bodyguard. The company gave me a lot more training and tended to employ me to protect rich ladies at big events: high-profile businesswomen, politicians. I dress up, join their entourage, stick close without being too obvious. It paid really well, and a lot of the work was evenings and weekends so it fit in well around studying. It was kind of fun even if nothing happened ..." Natalie trailed off. Pepper had let her face stay expressionless while she thought fast behind it.

"How convenient," she said evenly. "And you just happen to mention it now, to a 'high-profile businesswoman', because?"

Natalie took a deep breath and met Pepper's eyes again.

"Because you don't like me working for Mr Stark and I want to give you another option than sacking me. Because Mr Stark's recent behaviour makes you even more of a target, and I can maybe help with that. Because you haven't picked a permanent assistant yet, and I can do the job." 

She stood very still, hardly seeming to breathe, while Pepper looked at her and thought that one over.

"Because assistant to the CEO is even more of an opportunity and I'm probably much less awful than Tony?" she enquired, deceptively-sweet. Natalie flinched, started to reply angrily, then stopped and took a breath, visibly calming herself.

"Please don't take my words out of context, Ms Potts. If you're not about to sack me as Mr Stark's assistant, then I'm not trying to leave. And I've got a lot to do." Natalie frowned, looked around at the destroyed house for the first time since the start of their conversation. "I mean it about you being even more of a target though. You do need to step up your security, with Iron Man being so publicly ... erratic."

"That's a commendably discreet way of putting it, Ms Rushman," said Pepper, suddenly tired without the sustaining energy of anger. "I'm not sacking you. But I think what you need to do for Tony, and what I need to do for Stark Industries, are very closely aligned in the next few days. Tony's ... not here." She tried not to worry too much about where he was. "Can I borrow you until he asks for you back?" She very carefully didn't think about how uncertain that time might be. "And get your assessment of my security and where it could be improved?"

Natalie nodded, looking pretty tired herself all of a sudden. "Yes, Ms Potts. I can give you a verbal assessment now, and a written one ... after I've slept, which is after I get this place secured." Pepper noticed that Natalie wasn't mentioning how long it might be until Tony returned either.

"Let me help you with that - it's important to the company too," she said, cutting off Natalie's protest before she could make it. "And I've experience in cleaning up Tony's messes; let's pool our resources and both get some sleep before dawn. Verbal security assessment can wait until after that." 

She found her way through the rubble to the nearest interface to Jarvis, and brought up details of security, cleaning & building services for Natalie, media contacts for herself. As Natalie followed her and started making calls with remarkable efficiency, Pepper admitted to herself Tony hadn't picked Natalie for being decorative, any more than he'd picked Pepper all those years ago.

They could work well together. Just until Tony got back, of course.


End file.
